The Stage

Sail away - Cruising Supplement

Published Monday 6 June 2005 at 10:25 by Peter Hepple

Performers wanting to break into cruising are facing a bright forecast, with more and more companies bidding to attract young passengers with music and theatre. Peter Hepple explains how, with hard work, entertaining on the oceans can be a fulfilling career

The cruising industry seems to have an inbuilt resilience that must be the envy of many of its contemporaries. Despite the still lingering effects of 9/11, the lurking peril of SARS and other potential pandemics which originate in the Far East, and the unfortunate publicity given to Aurora’s world cruise that never was, cruising is still a growing sector of the holiday menu.

It has not been without its casualties over the past year. Festival and Royal Olympic seem to have disappeared off the cruising map, which in total means quite a lot of ships. But other companies will probably rise in their place and the ships will undoubtedly move to new ownership, for relatively new vessels have a market price.

But look at the list of new ships due to be launched or put into service before this time next year. Most of them are very big, although small, more luxurious ships are a growing slice of the cruising scene.

Each large cruise liner - those ranging from 50,000 tons to the giants of over 100,000 - represent jobs for at least 50 entertainers, musicians and technicians, probably more in those ships that have theatres accommodating audiences of 1,000 or more, a selection of nightclubs and lounges and a big entertainment programme for children. They may not mean jobs for British performers, for this is an international business, not bound by labour regulations, though Brits will get their fair share.

Each year I would guess that several hundred jobs are being created for performers. Even easyCruise, with a completely new approach to cruising with its step on/step off policy and spartan accommodation by luxury line standards, has a live band. And so do many of the ferries plying their trade across the English Channel, North Sea, the Baltic, along the Scandinavian coast, the Mediterranean, the Bay of Biscay and so on, not to mention both sides of the USA and the Far East.

And new companies continue to come into existence because there are plenty of ships available for charter. Like the rest of the travel industry, cruising is all about selling. Travel agents and companies might sell you a week or two in the Balearic Islands, the Canaries, Cyprus and Morocco but they do not own the hotels in which you will be staying. In a sense they charter them and install facilities, including entertainment, that they feel the guests will want.

So is the cruising industry the answer to a performer’s prayers? Provided that you are young, fully trained as a singer and dancer, and fancy-free, I would say that it is. You may have to carry out duties additional to those of entertaining, including that of bingo caller, quizmaster, deck games overseer and excursion guide, and will probably have to share a cabin that may be below the waterline, plus being expected to keep in performing trim and learn new routines, but it is still an interesting as well as busy life.

For the solo entertainer it will almost certainly be an intriguing change of scene from a round of one-nighters, especially as you may have to perform only a couple of times a week. And you will probably be regarded as a star of sorts by audiences who may not go to clubs and theatres too often and, on many ships, are middle-aged to elderly.

And if you really get hooked by a constantly changing panorama, you could make a career of it and end up as a cruise director, a very public figure with a daily list of duties as long as your arm.

Certainly there will be no diminution of cruise entertainment in the foreseeable future, quite the reverse in fact, because all the big companies are anxious to extend their customer base by attracting younger passengers whose tastes run to visual and circus acts, contemporary comedy and modern pop, the kind of entertainment they expect at home.

Themed cruises are also on the increase, covering classical music, opera, dance, jazz, comedy and more serious theatre, which gives employment to lecturers on most subjects under the sun, as well as performers.

The future is fairly bright, as far as one can determine. Go for it.